No Money? No Problem. Here are Three Types of Virtual Summits You Can Create

There’s no doubt about it, a virtual summit will skyrocket your business and quickly position you as the expert in your niche or industry.

But every entrepreneur at some point has to deal with the “money” factor and here is where my virtual summit formula comes in. I used the same formula to pull off Maximize Summit and grew my mailing list by 1000% in only the first two weeks of promoting my virtual summit.

My mailerlite dashboard, before and two weeks into summit promotion

I also made three times the amount I invested in the summit, and have several testimonies from summit attendees and speakers.

If I can do it, you can do it too.

Remember, every minute you are not planning your virtual summit, you lose the opportunity to grow a targeted list of prospects by the 100’s or 1000’s.

So, if money is an issue but you still want to build your list fast and quickly become the recognized expert in your niche, you can host these three types of virtual summits:

VIRTUAL SUMMIT FORMULA .1. POWERED BY

You will need some tools and software but you can offset these expense by creating a “Powered by” summit.

As the name implies, everything you need to create and host your summit – from domain name and hosting, to email marketing will be powered by businesses offering those services.

Startplanning your summit two to four months before if you want to host a “Powered by” summit. This will give you enough time for the back and forth from the businesses that want to power your summit.

What I love most about the “Powered by” approach is you don’t need a big name brand before you can pull it off. Mid and Small-sized businesses work just fine.

And guess what, they are going to love you for it because you are giving them a free platform [not exactly free because you are putting in tons of work] for publicity and also promoting their product.

In my virtual summit coaching services, I go into an in-depth explanation of how to host a “powered by” virtual summit and get companies saying yes to power your virtual summit

VIRTUAL SUMMIT FORMULA .2. SPONSORED BY

This is where it gets interesting. What if you could create a virtual summit that not only serves the interest of your speakers, audience and your business but also other businesses?

You create a win-win-win-win situation.

The sweet spot is your virtual summit expenses are paid for and you make a nice chunk of profit, but this type of virtual summit requires more expertise and strategic execution.

You are probably thinking, why would a company sponsor me and is there enough money allocated to sponsorship for me to get one? But stop right there.

According to Statista, global sponsorship spending amounted to 55.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2014 and has increased to over 60.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2016, so there is enough to go around.

Besides, there are different kinds of sponsorship your summit can take advantage of but I digress …

A “Sponsored by” virtual summit is a summit that has been designed from the scratch with a sponsorship angle, such that it appeals to more established companies and big-name brands.

Its best you start planning this type of summit at least six months in advance to give you enough time to meet with decision makers, prepare your proposal and get approval.

Why should you go after this type of virtual summit asides the pure pleasure you get from saying my virtual summit was sponsored by XYZ Company ?

You should because you build a stronger network that you can tap into for your next project, gives you credibility as the virtual summit host, adds authority to the summit and on the long term results in more money.

You can learn everything I know about getting sponsorship for your virtual summit here. Using this exact strategy I was able to secure meetings with Coca-Cola’s brand manager, Head of Media for a major media company, Country manager for Google, several appointments, Media sponsorship, money sponsorship and what’s more important, I have my foot in the door for future events

VIRTUAL SUMMIT FORMULA .3. PLATFORM-SPECIFIC SUMMIT

If you can’t follow through with a “Sponsored by” virtual summit, you can definitely create and host a platform-specific summit.

Platform-specific summit can also be called a product-specific virtual summit and it’s perfect if you want to be seen as the “big player” in a particular industry or associated with a product. For example Mike Allton, a speaker on my summit who is already a Hootsuite certified professional can create a virtual summit on Hootsuite and have Hootsuite pay the expenses. Totally doable.

Joseph Michael who has a course on scrivener can create a virtual summit on “using scrivener to become a better writer.”

If you are not already an expert for a product/niche, the best way to go about this is to partner with someone who already is.

It’s a really good strategy because you are going to be doing all the work in terms of coming up with the summit strategy, scheduling interviews and promoting; while the only thing they have to do is add you as a user on their existing platforms such as hosting, email marketing, scheduling system and also connect you with people in their network.